Non-formal education is really important in our organisation and hundreds of trainings are delivered to our members every year. Trainers are those who share their skills and their knowledge with participants. A group of 13 trainers from different AEGEE locals gathered in Wrocław from the 13th until the 15th of January for the 2017 edition of the Trainers’ Forum. Along with 100 other young trainers from other NGOs, they spent three valuable days discussing, practising and sharing their experiences with training and non-formal education. 

What is the Trainers’ Forum?

Antonis: Officially, the Trainers’ Forum (TsF) is an international conference for trainers and facilitators with various backgrounds. Unofficially, it is an opportunity for any trainer or facilitator, regardless of experience, to get a glimpse into the magic world of trainers, see new topics and approaches in non-formal education, get inspired by the work of other trainers and even form alliances that will have an impact on society.

Zsofia: Trainers’ Forum started out a few years ago, as an informal gathering for youth trainers and, by 2017, it has become an official conference for more than 100 youth trainers from NGOs of many disciplines. It is a great event for trainers to share best practices, reflect on the current trends in non-formal education and build their professional network.

When and where did it take place?

Petra:  TsF took place in a lovely Polish city, Wrocław, in the second week of chilly January from the 13th until the 15th. During these dates, the temperature was low, but coffee and tea breaks and hunting the famous 350 Wrocław dwarfs kept us warm. There were several of them near the Wrocław University of Science and Technology, where we had our sessions, and nearby the dormitories, where we stayed in bedrooms for two and three people.

Who were in the AEGEE “Delegation” ?

Balázs: There were 13 people from all over the Network, namely Anna Ziętkiewicz (AEGEE-Wrocław), Antonis Triantafyllakis (AEGEE-Academy/AEGEE-Cluj-Napoca), Balázs Kovács (AEGEE-Debrecen), Emanuel Knodt (AEGEE-Bamberg), Jorge Miguel Vielva (AEGEE-Valladolid), Jorge Sánchez Hernández (AEGEE-Dresden), Mayri Tiido (AEGEE-Tartu), Noémi Lőwy (AEGEE-Debrecen), Paolo Ghisleni (AEGEE-Bergamo), Paweł Cieślak (AEGEE-Warszawa), Petra Buruzs (AEGEE-Budapest), Urša Svetelj (AEGEE-Ljubljana) and Zsófia Komáromi (AEGEE-Budapest).

Zsofia: It was great that this edition of TsF brought together trainers from several generations and many different locals. This also allowed us to learn from each other and discuss the current projects and challenges in AEGEE.

How was the experience?

Paolo: It was cool! More than a hundred trainers from very diverse backgrounds were a wonderful playground for all of us. We had the chance to experience trainings from both trainer and trainee side. We experimented, discussed, challenged each other. I could not really ask for more.

Mayri: The experience was one of a kind, especially with so many people from a wide range of countries and organisations. When talking to someone new, you never know what their story is, you only know that everybody who was there was a trainer. The days were rather long and intense, but filled with interesting content and discussions. The event gave me a lot, and, as Paolo said, I could not have asked for more.

Jorge: It was an amazing experience. I had the great opportunity to learn and be inspired by different trainers, coming from everywhere in the world. The schedule was quite intense, but we could still find some time to get to know some of the awesome people who were around. It was a great group of folks to talk to. I would love to come back to another edition [he smiles, ed.].

Noemi: It was my first time attending this international event. I was quite happy and proud to see so many familiar faces from AEGEE. I really enjoyed it, as the participants were coming from all over the world and having various backgrounds (students, representatives of youth organisations, professional trainers) made this experience quite a unique one. We had very good discussions and creatively inspiring training sessions in the modern buildings of Wrocław university. I was very happy to have a chance to take part in the Forum, where everyone was open and eager to spread knowledge and learn from each other.

Petra: Being part of the big trainers’ world was fascinating, impressive and inspirational at the same time. Everyone was hungry to learn new methods, tricks and practices. Sometimes I felt that training the trainer is like healing a doctor, a pretty hard, but not impossible task. I strongly recommend attending TsF at least once, it is a milestone in a trainer’s life.

How was its structure? Which sessions took place, what kind of skills were required, what was the outcome?

Jorge Miguel: The event lasted for two days and a half, plus an extra day prior to TsF, dedicated to an Open Training Day (OTD). During the OTD, on Thursday, many trainers delivered training sessions on different topics for local students, as well as other trainers participating in TsF, who wanted to attend those sessions. TsF started on Friday morning with an opening ceremony and team building activities, where the trainers participating in TsF reflected on their personal goals for TsF and set their mindset for the event. Then, for most of the remaining part of TsF, there were nine training sessions or workshops in parallel, among which the more than 110 trainers participating in TsF were distributed. There were more than 100 sessions in total, on a lot of different training-related fields. On Sunday, there was an Open Space where people could suggest new sessions to discuss, on topics they still felt necessary to address. Finally there was the closing of the event, with hopes that new editions of TsF will take place soon. In general, TsF was very diverse, with sessions of all kinds in parallel, trainers coming from different fields and organisations and with very different experiences. Some of them had thousands of hours of experience as trainers, while others were taking their first steps as trainers. Because of that, the outcomes are also very different, depending on each person, but for most, it was a boost of energy and ideas and an opportunity to develop trainers’ skills, discuss training-related topics, create connections with other trainers and think about future projects.

How important is non-formal education in a youth organisation?

Balázs: Everything we carry out in AEGEE is, at its core, based on non-formal education (NFE). We can learn a lot by doing. We can improve ourselves through the experiences we gain, in the form of developing our skills, competences and attitudes. Ideally, we also gain in-depth awareness about these processes and become capable of explaining why NFE, and especially informal learning, matters these days. You can read more about the topic in the “NFE Book” of AEGEE by clicking here or by directly approaching the AEGEE-Academy, our association’s pool of trainers.

Paolo: I am firmly convinced that non-formal education will be a big trend in the future and it will represent the avantgarde of learning processes and educational models. We have the chance to try, experiment and fail, in a way that a formal environment will never allow, and this gives NGOs like AEGEE a unique opportunity. I really hope that we will not miss it.

Written by Erika Bettin, AEGEE-Verona

One of the plans of the Comité Directeur 2014 – 2015 was to bring the forum back to AEGEE as a means of communication and platform for discussion. We spoke to Ivan Bielik, Human Resources Director, about this potential new place-to-be in the world of AEGEE!

The AEGEEan: To start at the beginning: when, why, and how was the forum first set up?

Ivan: To be honest, I do not know when exactly the original forum was established. What is important, is that it is here right now. It exists to provide an online space for AEGEE where members can discuss, communicate their ideas and give feedback to others.

What other ways of communications have been and are still used?

As far as I remember there have been different tools for internal discussion – mailing lists, YPart, the forum and social media. YPart has not been used recently because we did not get what we wanted from the company to necessarily improve the tool for AEGEE. The mailing lists are still here and social media are used by members as well. In the last year, the forum has been reintroduced. With this Comité Directeur (CD), we wanted to create one coherent platform for internal discussion in AEGEE. YPart was not useful for this, because it is mostly a tool for feed-backing proposals, which makes the discussion limited. Mailing lists are not structured and not properly visualised for the audience. Usage of social media scatters the discussion into different places and there are serious concerns about the privacy of such discussion. Thus, the forum had the best trade-off from the four options. That’s why the CD would like to move every discussion to the forum, so that there is one coherent place.

What has changed for this new forum?

We changed the design of the forum to fulfill the need of a modern responsive design on cellphones and tablets. The biggest change however is that we finally started to talk again about the place where to discuss matters that are relevant to us. Participation in online discussion is not determined by how beautiful an online forum looks, but by people who care enough to go there and discuss what is relevant to them. Thus, the current CD believes that we need to talk about this online discussion in our organisation to slowly change the pattern of lack of online participation.

Which information can be found on the forum?

There are places for discussions about statutory events, internal matters and thematic discussions related to different interests in the Network. Moreover, there is a new area for local antennae to share solutions for their problems and to exchange best practices. It has a huge potential to be beneficial for locals, but right now it is heavily underused by members involved in local antennae.

Why should people join the forum too?

I do not have the need to forcefully persuade anyone to go there. In my opinion, it should be natural that if I am a part of an organisation that I care about, I am interested in discussions about matters that are relevant to all of its members. But I guess that is kind of idealistic to expect. The sad reality of our organisation is that the culture of discussion is low. And it takes time to change such patterns.

What are the future plans for the forum?

I would like to install a plugin on the forum that would create automatic digests once per week and then post it on the mailing list (either AEGEE-L or FORUM-L). This way, people get an overview of the developments on the forum directly in their email inboxes. And then there is the option to adjust the structure of the forum, so it reacts to the needs of the organisation. But I need others to express their needs and suggestion about it.

What are the advantages of the forum for users?

These are not different from any other online discussion place. An AEGEE member has an opportunity to take part in discussions and express their point of view. They can participate in forming the opinion that might spill over into something bigger than casual discussion. They can connect with people of similar interest. Additionally, they can help others either by explaining something (like why it is useful for organisation to have an online space for discussion), providing them with something (IT solutions for a local antenna, for example) or supporting other ideas (put forward any idea you support in AEGEE).

And what are the downsides?

It is an online tool, so the contact and bonds will never be as strong as they are with face-to-face discussions. Also, the structure of forum is not very intuitive and sometimes it is hard to find relevant things. It requires a bit of time to get acquainted with the structure of the forum. Even though it is not something everyone is willing to do, the structure is very fluid and easy to adjust if there is a constructive suggestion. The forum is not perfect and never will be, but as I said before the overall trade-off between benefits and problems is prevailing on the side of the forum.

How do you plan to attract more members to the forum?

The usage of online discussion platform is a long-term process. It will not happen from one week to another. I can use the analogy of the implementation of Visual Identity. Even after two years of existence, more or less only half of the organisation uses it. The same happens with the forum. I do not expect that people will start using it immediately. The best way to attract attention is to provide content that matters. If there is content on the forum that is relevant to AEGEE, its members will find the way how to gradually become involved.

Written by Svenja van der Tol, AEGEE-Nijmegen

One of the points in the 52nd CD’s Activity Plan that brought some expectation was the creation of a platform for discussion for AEGEE. As most of the readers probably know, one of the means of our beloved organisation is ‘a forum for discussion’. That implies that AEGEE has to serve as a space for discussion among young people in Europe, enabling them to discuss about important matters related to our society and of importance for youth.

Even though, that has been unrealistic for quite some time. AEGEEans discuss, but not in a whole, structured way. If you go to an AEGEE party you will probably hear groups of people discussing about such important matters as the lack of employment for youth, the problems with visas and the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

Then what is happening to structured discussion?

Agoras do not have the time for it, EPM is not enough, and local events are not totally inclusive. Discussions got lost in the world of 293,000 posts per minute on Facebook and the maximum of 140 characters on Twitter. People do not discuss on the internet anymore, they comment, like and retweet.

What should the place for discussion be, then? One of the most powerful tools of the 21st century has been the web 2.0, which enables the average user to easily share and spread information and content among the world wide web. The revolution in Syria and Egypt and raise of awareness like the famous ice bucket challenge are just two examples of the great power that this tool provides.

So, ideally, the web and internet seem like the perfect channel for AEGEEans to discuss?

Historically, the mailing list AEGEE-L had served as a meeting point for discussion for AEGEEans, with the amazing feature that there is no filter for it (the messages one sends are sent to all the subscribers right away, without having to be approved by anyone). Even though, with the intoxication of information anybody with internet access suffers nowadays, people were ignoring the happening discussions. Nobody was interested in what was said in there, and they were complaining that too many mails were sent.

That’s when the 52^nd Comité Directeur came with the brilliant idea of improving AEGEE’s Forum, created in 2009 by the 49^th Comité Directeur. So, after the Activity Plan was ratified by the Agora in Cagliari in November 2014, they came back to the headoffice and started working on improving the forum. Just before Christmas it was relaunched.

It’s quite funny that one of the first discussions that happened in the forum was a meta discussion, pushed from AEGEE-L by members of the Comité Directeur, about the use of the forum as a means of discussion. Some experienced members were defending the use of AEGEE-L and the members of the Comité Directeur told people they had no right to complain about the use of the forum since nobody made any comment when the Activity Plan was presented in Cagliari.

The truth is that, with a 42 page Activity Plan, a 134 page Activity Report,  a 23 page Agora booklet, a 57 page Candidates booklet, a 42 page Proposals booklet, and a 13 page Thematic booklet it is no surprise that everybody missed something as the ‘Forum for discussion’ topic.

So, the forum became the official channel for discussion for AEGEE. But, is there life after the forum?

Since the forum was officially launched on 12th December 2014, 23 topics, of which 16 are related to internal work, were opened. In total, these topics have 120 answers, making it a bit more than 5 answers per topic. No single topic was closed, or a conclusion was reached, after it was opened. Among the 7 topics that are non related to internal work, 6 of them were opened by Policy Officers and one by a member of the Comité Directeur. (Data on 27th February 2015) With a network of 13000 members, these numbers are far from high enough or ideal to call AEGEE a means for ‘forum for discussion’.